The Story Behind Daft Punk & Jay Z’s Scrapped Collaboration Revealed

Mitchell Leib, the president of music and soundtracks for Walt Disney Records, just revealed the secret story behind a scrapped collaboration between Daft Punk and Jay Z for Disney’s Tron: Legacy back in 2010. The track was eventually leaked in 2014, and the reason that it stayed unreleased might not be a huge surprise – it wasn’t that good.

Daft Punk didn’t even want to make the single in the first place, but Leib reveals that the duo was “tortured” to make an official single for the soundtrack. In the end, Leib was afraid that the filmmakers would find the track “too rooted in real life and rap for their fantasy movie,” which we would happen to agree with.

Even getting Daft Punk to work on the film at all was a laborious process, taking nearly two years and various suitors for them to sign on. It wasn’t until Leib was cast with the job that the duo finally acquiesced.

“Daft Punk, for the most part, only do one thing at a time, which is why they’re so great at what they do—it is incredible focus,” said Leib. “So I think at the time that they were initially approached, they were too tied up with other things.” But after four or five months of nagging, they finally signed on and we got one of the best movie soundtracks of the year.

The Jay Z collab came about as an attempt to create an official single for the soundtrack, and the decision to approach Jay Z was a collective one. Unfortunately, as we’re all aware, the song didn’t make it to the final cut.

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